1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an associated apparatus and a method for supporting development of a semiconductor device. In particular, the present invention relates to an associated apparatus and a method for supporting development of a semiconductor device having a CPU core or an apparatus incorporating such a semiconductor device.
2) Description of the Related Art
Many semiconductor devices (e.g., many integrated circuits (ICs) and application specific integrated circuits (ASICs)) which have been developed in recent years have an system-on-chip (system LSI) architecture in which function blocks of a plurality of electronic circuits are arranged according to use and integrated in a chip. Hereinafter, function blocks of electronic circuits are referred to as cores. In some of ICs or ASICs having a system-on-chip (system LSI) architecture, a CPU (central processing unit) core is provided, and complex analysis processing is performed by a program in the CPU core.
In order to support development of a semiconductor device (i.e., a system LSI such as an IC or ASIC) having a CPU core as described above or an apparatus which includes such a semiconductor device (system LSI) as a part of the apparatus, verification of operations, evaluation of performance, and the like are performed by using an in-circuit emulator, which is a pilot model. Hereinafter, an in-circuit emulator is referred to as an ICE.
However, the conventional methods and apparatuses for supporting development of a system LSI cannot perform debugging or verification of operations at accurate timings until a pilot model is produced.
Nevertheless, in the recent LSI development, development and verification of software are required to be performed at the same time as verification of hardware in order to reduce development times of system LSIs. Therefore, conventionally, debugging and verification of operations are performed based on a virtual IC model until hardware verification and production of a pilot model are completed. For example, in conventional development of software embedded in a system LSI, an ICE which emulates a microprocessor in a CPU core is connected instead of the microprocessor, and debugging of a program describing operations of the CPU core and analysis and verification of the operations are performed by using the ICE until completion of hardware around the CPU core. In this case, it is possible to emulate operations of the microprocessor. However, for example, it is impossible to emulate signal propagation delay times which are associated with access to memory areas, register areas in the circuit, and the like by the microprocessor.
Since emulation is conventionally required to be performed by using a virtual IC model, it is impossible to emulate accurate timings. For example, the signal propagation delay times in emulation become different from the signal propagation delay times in the actual system LSI. Thus, it is impossible to perform debugging and verification of operations based on accurate timings until a pilot model is produced. That is, the entire system LSI cannot be tested until the pilot model is produced. This problem is one of factors which increase the time necessary to complete development. For example, a malfunction may be found after the pilot model is produced.
As explained above, in the conventional methods and apparatuses for supporting development of a semiconductor device, it is difficult to perform verification with high accuracy and efficiency without a pilot model, and this impedes reduction of development times of system LSIs.